Russia gears up to mark Victory Day

Russia is preparing this week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the May 9, 1945 Soviet victory over Nazi Germany with imperial flair and a military parade on Saturday.

An estimated 27 million of the former Soviet Union's soldiers and civilians were killed in World War II, and the Red Army's triumph in the deadliest war in history is a huge point of pride in Russia.

Victory Day brings together Russians from all walks of life irrespective of political sympathies.

"It is a day of glory, a day of our people's pride, a day of the highest veneration of a generation of victors," said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, who has railed against attempts to belittle Russia's role in the war, lost many relatives. But he said that his father, who was critically injured, and his mother, who barely survived the Leningrad siege, did not hold a grudge against Nazi soldiers.

"They had no hate for the enemy - that's what is surprising," he wrote recently in a column for a Russian magazine. "Honestly, to this day I cannot quite understand it."

On Saturday, Putin will preside over a Red Square parade featuring Russia's newest weapons, along with more than 15,000 Russian and foreign troops, Indian brigadiers and Chinese honor guards.

He will host leaders from China, Cuba, India, South Africa and a number of former Soviet states who are among the 68 heads of state and leaders of international organizations invited to attend.

In another development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will meet in Volgograd in south Russia on Thursday to discuss bilateral and international issues, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Survivors and liberators alike recalled on Sunday the horror of the Dachau concentration camp and the overwhelming sense of relief when it was liberated 70 years ago. German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to keep alive the memory of Nazi crimes and give no quarter to present-day discrimination or anti-Semitism.

Dachau, near Munich, was the first concentration camp the Nazis set up a few weeks after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. Before it was liberated by US troops on April 29, 1945, more than 200,000 people from across Europe were held there, and over 40,000 prisoners died.

AFP - AP